Film Review: Grand Prix (1966)

Submitted by taoyue on Mon, 04/04/2005 - 00:00

Grand Prix (1966)
directed by John Frankenheimer
Frames in this review are taken from the two-disc Warner Brothers DVD,
released in July 2006.

Grand Prix is the showpiece film for Formula One racing and a
cult favorite in the racing community. It shows historical racetracks
from Formula One’s early days that no longer exist, and pioneered the
in-car race footage that is now a staple of television footage. Yet
despite its niche position in the market, the film is actually quite
accessible even to someone whose only contact with racing comes from
channel-surfing.

In a way, Grand Prix is the best Arthur Hailey film ever made,
even though it's not based on an Arthur Hailey novel. It brings in a
Grand Hotel-esque cast of characters, spins them around in a
blender, and spits them all out into a spectacular climax. And, unlike
that stillborn Arthur Hailey 70mm spectacle
Airport, Grand Prix requires no artificial action
beyond what happens in the normal course of a race. The expert camera
work and careful editing give the live-action racing sequences a thrill
that is impossible to achieve with special effects.

Formula One racing

The reason to watch this film is for the racing. The surrounding plot is
close to soap opera and is not that interesting. Fortunately, the racing
scenes are spectacular and absorbing, shot from inside the cockpit, in
the air, along the track, in a chase car, pretty much everywhere that a
camera can go. The fact that most of it was shot in real life with the
cars traveling at high speeds gives it a very authentic look, and some of
it comes from actual Formula One races. The excitement is enhanced by
the editing, with frenetic cutting juxtaposed with longer sequences that
provide the viewer with situational awareness of the larger race.

There's also a fair amount of technical knowledge presented to the
viewer, much of it through voiceovers from the drivers. You get a good
sense about racing history and legend as they discuss the allure of the
Monaco Grand Prix, a race that takes place on narrow city streets,
leaving little room for passing and even less margin for error. During
the climactic final race at Monza, the drivers describe how much they
hate the banked high-speed curve, how the tremendous centrifugal force
and bumpiness of the curve cause the cars to take a tremendous beating.

The race at Monza is almost frightening to watch, as the camera remains
fairly stable on the straight sections, but shakes energetically on the
banks, accompanied by the convulsive vibrations of the wheels as the
suspension struggles with the road surface. Even on the straights, the
drivers point out the dangers from the cars remaining in close proximity
while traveling at 200 mph (320 km/h), as the slipstream effects presents
trailing cars with less air resistance and encourages the cars to remain
close. With such high performance demands even then, one can anticipate
the edge of the envelope that is being pushed by today's computer-modeled
cars, which travel so fast that they use an airfoil shape to generate
negative lift for better road adhesion.

Surprisingly, the film was shot in 70mm instead of 35mm. Using film that
was twice as wide and moved 25% faster surely made the racing scenes more
difficult to shoot. But this Super Panavision film was originally shown
on Cinerama screens, hence the long first-person point-of-view
sequences. The larger film format also results in less graininess in the
composites and split-screens, and this quality is visible even on DVD.

The split screen effects do feel a bit dated, and they also give too much
of an avant-gard effect, especially in mosaics where the screen shows 16
repetitions of the same image. But a nice triptych effect emerges when
the screen splits into thirds – especially appropriate for a film that
was shown in Cinerama theaters. True Cinerama, after all, was shot on
three separate pieces of film, and displays visible join lines where the
three projected images come together. In thirds, the screen plays with
all the possibilities: symmetric triptychs, non-symmetric triptychs,
multiple-images, and Cinerama-style panoramas with the full 70mm negative
used but with the split lines left in.

The soundtrack on the DVD comes from the revised edition, in which
Toshiro Mifune's English is dubbed. It’s easier to understand, but the
voice actor's fake Japanese accent is so overdone that it comes close to
caricature. Plus, it’s slightly off-sync. In the few sentences of
Japanese that Mifune’s character speaks, he sounds much more
distinguished, more like the confident industrialist that he plays. The
audio is generally clear, with the dynamic range really being displayed
in the roars of the engines during the races.

Plot

The film opens with the Monaco Grand Prix in the streets of Monte Carlo.
An accident propels driver Pete Aron (James Garner) into the harbor and
seriously injures teammate Scott Stoddard (Brian Bedford). Aron finds
himself persona non grata and gets kicked off the team. Nor is
he welcome at his former team of Ferrari, so he does what many washed-up
sports stars do — turn into a television sportscaster.

While Aron is on the sidelines, veteran Ferrari driver Jean-Pierre Sarti
(Yves Montand) is racking up victory after victory and wooing American
fashion magazine writer Louise Frederickson (Eva Marie Saint). His brash
young teammate Nino Barlini (Antonio Sabato) is living the sixties life
of sex and rock-and-roll, chasing after Lisa (French singing sensation
Françoise Hardy). But all hope is not lost for our protagonist, as
Japanese magnate Izo Yamura (Toshiro Mifune) enters the scene and offers
him a job. He was a lousy sportscaster anyway.

Having introduced us to the main characters, the film settles into the
standard plot, following the racing community on and off the course.
Stoddard painfully recovers from his injury and returns to the circuit
while popping painkillers, obsessed with equaling his older brother's
championship record. Off the course, Stoddard's relationship with Aron
becomes even icier when his estranged wife Pat (Jessica Walter) starts
sleeping with Aron and modeling for Louise's magazine.

Meanwhile, Barlini moves to the top and teammate Sarti falls from grace.
Sarti finds comfort in an a intellectual and empathic relationship with
Louise, escaping the pressure from the Ferrari owner and from his own
estranged wife. Who will win the big race, and who will lose his life in
the next spectacular wreck? It is not that different from today’s
dramatized sports telecasts, in which every competitor is succeeding in
the face of some personal tragedy. Grand Prix makes the
contrast explicit by using split-screens to simultaneously show personal
and professional events.

James Garner is at ease in the role of the likable American that he
cultivated in other films. But standing out from the crowd is Yves
Montand, who steals every scene with a devoted yet weary performance as
Sarti. Garner is a bit too likable and two-dimensional, always doing the
honorable thing, whether with Pat or Yamura or Stoddard. In contrast,
Sarti has a hardened side, which produces more sympathy from the viewer
and from Louise. When he sees an accident on the track, he allows
himself to feel no sympathy and instead puts his foot down hard, just as
everyone else is subconsciously slackening off the pedal.

Toshiro Mifune brings an authoritative air to the Japanese industrialist,
much like Henry Fonda brings gravitas to even the most minor film that
he’s involved in. The Japanese tea sequence with Aron, although somewhat
formulaic, reminds us that the 1960s were the decade in which Japan
reemerged onto the world stage, hosting the
1964 Tokyo Olympics and feeling proud of the economic renaissance.
Brian Bedford presents a convincingly icy Stoddard — even in the tender
scenes with Pat, he seems right at the freezing point.

Too predictable

Unfortunately, much of the plot seems to have been added to pad out the
film to three hours. Perhaps they wanted the audience at the
reserved-seating roadshows to feel that they got their money’s worth.
The screenplay is quite formulaic, filled with stock characters and
forgettable dialog. Really, Montand must be commended for wrestling a
great part out of merely an above-average role. Plus, his French accent
add sparkle and sincerity to some banal dialog.

The plot elements are all too predictable. Pat leaves Scott because she
is fed up with the way he'd sweat the night before a race — gosh, haven't
we seen this before somewhere? And while Eva-Marie Saint always brings a
plain-Jane quality to her dialog, what her character gets to say in this
movie puts her dangerously close to a scattered-brained blonde reporter.
You remember the men's names in the movie because they're doing
something, but the women are there just to worry about them. Louise's
role as a reporter is practically a throwaway, as is Pat's taking up
modeling on a lark. The best part of the writing lies in the jabs that
the Europeans make at the Americans. With three writers listed in the
credits, including director John Frankenheimer himself, the film bears
all the marks of a committee effort.

John Frankenheimer earned his reputation with taut political thrillers
like
The Manchurian Candidate and
Seven Days in May. On this fluffier piece of Hollywood
entertainment, it seems that he put all his energies into the racing
sequences (no second unit director is credited) and phoned in the scenes
off the racing course. A similar dichotomy is visible in the technical
aspects of the film. Take the editing, which won a well-deserved Academy
Award. The race sequences are impressive indeed, but the soap opera is
cut together with less variety than a television sitcom. Standard
angles, medium-close ups, alternating cuts as the characters speak to
each other. Three people were credited for the editing, so who worked on
the race scenes and who put together the soap opera?

Similarly, Maurice Jarre's score for the racing sequences is majestic and
romantic, with a certain international flavoring in its lushness.
Unfortunately, it suffers the indignity of turning into Musack when it's
haphazardly placed behind the soap opera scenes. There's one
particularly egregious example, where Sarti and Frederickson leave a
reception and go into a quiet garage, as the completely inappropriate
racing march plays on at low volume behind them. There's no possible
diegetic source for the music, and it is merely distracting in a scene
that should’ve been left as dialog-only.

Despite its uneven nature, however, Grand Prix is sort of a
guilty pleasure. The film has terrific action scenes that will thrill
any fan (or not) of Formula One auto racing. Don’t be afraid to
fast-forward. You won’t be missing much.